Company is failing to keep up with Samsung, Motorola, Apple, and even HTC

When
you think of the words "compelling Android smartphone" and
"LG" in the same sentence its hard to bring an image to
mind. While the South Korean electronics maker does have a
couple
of Android phones (namely, the Ally and Optimus One) it has
failed to keep up with Motorola, Apple, Samsung, and even much
smaller Taiwanese manufacturer HTC.

That failure has cost Nam
Yong the chief executive position at LG Electronics. Mr.
Nam has been ousted in favor of Koo Bon-joon, the head of
trading firm LG International, another unit in the LG Group
conglomerate. The move echoes number one handset maker
Nokia's decision
to oust former CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo last week.
Seeking to overcome sliding performance in the mobile arena, Nokia
tapped Stephen Elop, a Canadian Microsoft executive, as Mr.
Kallasvuo's replacement.

Lee Yong-jik, a fund manager at AIG
Investments in Seoul, was optimistic about the change in
leadership and the benefits it may bring LG's smart phone campaign.
States Mr. Yong-jik, "Koo is expected to reshuffle the
organization and actively cope with the fast-changing IT industry...
LG is expected to narrow the gap with Apple and other leading
smartphone markers."

Even if the LG Group's LG
Electronics unit is struggling, its still accounts for a significant
portion of the group's revenue. In the second quarter the unit
accounted for one third of the groups total sales and one fourth
of the total revenue. That wasn't enough, though, to stop the
group from posting a 120 billion won (appr. $103M USD )
loss for the quarter.

Mr. Koo, 58, attended South Korea's
top college, Seoul National University, and the University of
Chicago's business school. He worked at AT&T for some time,
then moved to LG. His older brother Koo Bon-moo is LG
Group Chairman's Chairman and CEO.

Mr. Koo, who owns the
Korean professional baseball team the LG Twins, is reportedly
extremely focused on winning. When he took over LG Phillips LCD
(later renamed LCD Display), he would reportedly greet employees by
saying, "Let's become No.1."

In 1999, after LG took
the display lead, he changes his catch phrase to, "Let's keep
our No.1 title."

The new executive is reportedly
preparing to clean house, relieving much of LG Electronics top
ranks. KB Investment & Securities analyst Harrison
Cho comments, "Koo is expected to replace (mobile chief)
Skott Ahn and other top executives. Under the ownership
management, LG will speed up the decision making process and quickly
respond to the change of the market environment."

The
company is preparing the successor to the low-end original Optimus
(Optimus One), a high-end model complete with a 1 GHz processor,
dubbed the Optimus Q. It is also prepping
Windows Phone 7 model(s) for launch. LG Electronics
thinks that the new Optimus Q phone, launching on as many as 120
carriers worldwide, is capable of selling 10 million units.

That's
an ambitious goal, considering that no single LG model has yet sold
more that 1 million units.

"When an individual makes a copy of a song for himself, I suppose we can say he stole a song." -- Sony BMG attorney Jennifer Pariser